I believe in Minneapolis it takes roughly $15,000 per year per pupil to get that average pupil to the 9th or 10th grade, which is when they drop out of school altogether.

from: http://www.mntax.org/cpfr/education.php

What that double-speak above means is that the best public education results in Minnesota cost $5,524 per pupil per year while the worst performing school district "educated" their students at a cost of $14,446 per pupil per year. Paying twice as much gives less than half the results of the best school district. No matter how you analyze it, that is pathetic.

Despite decades of "Head Start" and other targeted programs, this is the reality (from the Alliance for Excellent Education):

Nice graph. I guess it would be inappropriate or politically/socially incorrect to point out the glaring omission.

All districts are paid the same for all students of similar ages. It's about $6,000 per (that's state and fed. $). There's more for sped. kids, extra for free/reduced lunch, extra for esl and other categories. Districts that have more than that per kid have done so through local tax. One student for one full year is an "ADM". In other words, the school is paid for average daily membership, and the average is figured by using an exact count several times a year. A high school kid counts as 1.2 ADM, while a k-2 (I think) are .8 or .9 ADM. Bigger districts are now pulling in major bucks for Q-Comp (teachers are being paid extra, above contract, for all sorts of things). It's a joke. The program was intended to act as a vehicle for drawing teachers away from the old lane/step pay scale. Yeah, didn't quite work out that way. Yes, I'm a teacher. I'm on my school board (small charter school). I'm the treasurer. I've been in education for 13 years. Both my parents were teachers.